FESTIVAL HISTORY

From 1994 the festival’s name is "Fényírók Fesztiválja – Another Connection", which is well known in professional and international circles, but in Hungary, it is known as MEDIAWAVE festival after the name of the foundation. This name suggests a totally different content on an international level.

RESPECT FOR TRADITION AND MODERN WAYS

Many people – in the past as well as today – considered the festival, which is the foundation’s best-known program, too folksy while others considered it too urban. The organisers believe that this very point of view, the respect for both the traditions and the modern ways – clashing or paralleling them – is what gives a special flavour to the festival in the Hungarian and international art-transmitting community.

NAMES AND CHANGES

The festival’s name in the first year was VIII. International Film And Video Art Festival. At this time the organisers viewed themselves as the legal successors of the Prize-winner Amateur Films’ International Festival organised in every 2-3 years by the Amateur Film Studio of Győr. They did this in spite of the fact that the former organiser group did not want to continue during the uneasy preceding years of the political system’s change. The new generation started with an artistic change of perspective.

After the first festival’s success the International Visual Art Foundation was formed in order to make organising issues easier. For this the team called for a short and internationally understandable name. Following Zoltán Burkus, a journalist’s idea this name became MEDIAWAVE, with the subtitle of International Visual Art Festival. The choice became problematic after a while as festivals with a name starting with MEDIA usually serve ground for experimental video and media works, while this festival tends to prefer traditional films.

To solve this problem following Zoltán Bicskei’s idea (drawer from Vojvodina) the festival uses the name "Fényírók Fesztiválja" from 1994 onwards. They could not translate it into English, so the organisers added "Another Connection" to the name, which means something else but it refers to the nature of the festival. From that time the organisers try to use the name MEDIAWAVE as an umbrella term for all the activities of the foundation.

From 2002 the organisers changed the subtitle into "International Film and Music Festival" that reflects the festival’s now dominating professional character in a much better way. From 2007 along with the two strong pillars: film and music, a new term came in "youth workshops", which indicates that the festival places more and more emphasis on involving the new generations into the artistic processes.